


In the Silence

by Oblivian03



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26810359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oblivian03/pseuds/Oblivian03
Summary: A short time after his knighting by Arthur and helping to free Camelot from Morgana, Gwaine finds himself still struggling to adjust to his new normal. A quiet night on one nondescript adventure leads to much thinking.
Relationships: Gwaine & Knights of the Round Table (Merlin), Gwaine & Leon (Merlin)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	In the Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own the Merlin franchise.

The stars were bright against the clear plain of a moonless sky. Gwaine blinked at them listlessly from where he was sprawled on his back amongst his sleeping comrades, his brothers in arms and name, for the knights of Camelot had once again taken leave of the castle walls to pursue adventure in the grand wilderness beyond.

Languor had bitten the small camp deeply. Even Merlin was still, sleep weighing him down with senselessness as little else seemed to do. Yet Gwaine could not follow in sharing such peace. Too many thoughts danced in his head, brawling in the space there and wreaking havoc on any chance of repose.

The man fingered the chainmail that laid heavy around his neck. Its constant weight was still new to him, an unusual feeling that hampered his fighting in training and in battle. Training itself was new, or at least the repetitive drills and manoeuvres that either Arthur or Leon would command each morn. It was a ritual that Gwaine struggled to understand. The importance of training was not lost on him, but structure had never much been part of his life. The bouts of friendly duels between knights, in contrast, were more familiar by far.

How often had he sparred with another friendly traveller upon the road? Quick footwork could be practiced alone amongst the trees dodging root and rabbit burrow while sliding in the mud, but the intricacies of the sword required a partner to perfect. There had been a one-eyed sell-sword years ago who had passed time by crossing blades with him during a ferocious storm that had kept them trapped in a cave for days. The disarming technique that marked his style Gwaine had learnt from a grey-haired man with more wrinkles than scars, and more stories than both combined. A woman with a wicked blade and a wickeder smile had danced thrice with him during some festival in one nondescript village, once to music, once with swords, and once beneath the sheets of a rundown inn.

The memories left an ache in his bones that Gwaine could not place. Fire crackled to his left and Elyan shifted beyond, tasked with the first watch of a long night.

A breeze picked up through the air, rustling the grass around them. Gwaine tilted his head, letting the soft blades brush across his face. This too was more familiar than the pillows of his Camelot bed. Somewhere there came the mournful howl of a wolf alone. When it died, there was no answer save the quiet rush of the breeze.

Gwaine felt a shiver shake his spine. He turned to his side and pillowed his head in the crook of his arm, turning his gaze back towards the stars. From the corner of his eye he could see Elyan half turn towards him, but the other knight stayed silent and soon refaced the darkness surrounding the camp. Gwaine exhaled. He had found himself quieter over the past few days and Elyan, along with the others, had taken concern with it. 

It was a warming sentiment, though unnecessary. Merlin had been prodding him for an answer for the past day, becoming increasingly frustrated when all Gwaine would do was shrug and smile and jokingly try to dislodge the servant from his saddle. Arthur had made several of his snark remarks, commenting on the unusual silence in the hopes of receiving an answer. Lancelot was more subtle, Elyan less so, and Leon had been the one to draw him aside and ask if he was well. Percival had seemed to understand, the large knight being rather quiet himself. Yet, earlier that evening as they had begun to make camp Percival had done as Leon had, drawing Gwaine aside and reassuring him that he would be listened to should he wish to divulge what troubled him.

Gwaine knew he talked a lot, perhaps too much for some. Some days it felt as though his tongue could never stop wagging, too many stories (and too few willing ears to listen between their happening) and too much joy that begged to be shared. Other days there was simply a need to fill tense air with jokes, to alleviate disharmony before it spawned into conflict.

The truth was there was no reason behind Gwaine’s silence. It was just a mood that had settled over him as it had in times before. If the difference was that this time he had friends to notice the change, then he would learn to manage this difference with a grin and a laugh.

He could wear chainmail and drag himself to do drills at dawn, and he could pledge his sword to the Lord of a court that had needed rescuing but was otherwise the same as all the other courts he had the displeasure of having seen. He could name a best friend, though he doubted he would be named the same in turn (and there was no hard feelings between him and Lancelot for it, for it was Merlin’s choice and he respected that), and he could adapt to change as he always had.

Life was not a constant thing. Even in the monotony of a commoner’s everyday toil there was change. It laid in the timing of rains between one year and the next, and the slow but sure cycle of generations in families. Gwaine had been many things in his life: a son and an orphan, an urchin and a drifter, a slave and a mercenary who fought for the largest purse, so long as that purse had morals he could stomach. At one distant point in his life he had been a noble, newly born and wailing in the wake of a war that would prove the heartless indifference of a king.

Infants had no concept of status, be they noble or not, and those first months of wealth had not been enough to sink the sickness that so often plagued others of such inherited station into him. This was something Gwaine was infinitely thankful for.

In his time, he had seen nobles do heinous things under the protection of their title, and he had seen peasants do equally heinous things to be granted such a privilege. Nobility was not in blood or names. Nor was it the naïve rules in tales told by those who had never seen war. Nobility to Gwaine was goodness through action, deeds which spoke themselves of righteousness. He had always believed it was earned through sweat and will and sacrifice, though Gwaine would call himself a master of none.

The men who laid around him, swaddled in red cloaks – or a brown coat in the case of one – were better examples than he. Lancelot might have been dazed by heroic tales, and Percival alongside him, while Leon and Arthur had been raised to heed the lineage of their blood, but all were good men at heart. What Merlin thought was harder to decipher, though he and Elyan bore a cynicism to the concept of nobility much like Gwaine’s own. This did not make them any lesser in word or deed.

It was what brought the seven together, their shared belief that nobility was defined by what one did, by how one lived in respect to others. The finer points were up for debate, and Gwaine held no illusion that his drinking and all-round unruliness were not considered two of the better parts of his character. Still, this did not matter in the thick of things. A sword was a sword, and a friend a friend, and justice wielded by a different hand was justice all the same.

Listening hard, the man counted the distinct patterns of his companions’ breathing. Percival’s was steady immediately beside him, Merlin’s more restless closer to the fire and Arthur’s side. Each of the others had their own rhythm, soft and loud, spotted by snores (in case of Arthur, at least, and what Gwaine thought was one of the horses), and the weary sigh of a watcher coming at long last to his bed.

Elyan passed by Gwaine as he made his way to Leon, stooping to shake the other man awake, a murmur passing between them before Elyan before bade Leon goodnight as he retreated to his bedroll. Leon, in turn, stood and started his trek away from the fire. Yet, instead of taking Elyan’s place, he sat near where Gwaine laid to the latter’s surprise.

The younger knight turned his head to watch the other, saying nothing but seeing no worth in feigning sleep for Elyan had no doubt told the other he was awake.

“You are quiet tonight,” Leon said as he settled to the watch, “Not much has changed there then.”

Gwaine hummed and looked again towards the stars. A while passed before it became clear the man would not answer the question Leon had all but asked.

The older knight took this in stride. Looking up to the stars himself, he sighed and pulled his cloak tighter around him. “There is a peace in these nights, I have always found, be it on a patrol or a lengthier venture such as this one. The stars give clarity to the thoughts in my head, which often seem like lesser things away from the bustle of the city. Sometimes quiet can bring us what we need.”

Gwaine gave no sign of his agreement or disagreement, merely exhaling a puff of air.

“There is something that troubles you,” Leon said in earnest, an eerie echo of Percival’s earlier words. “I do not pretend to know your thoughts, Gwaine, much less your history, but I would know what this trouble is so I can help alleviate its burden, if you will let me.”

The words stirred something in Gwaine, urging an answer where all other attempts to cajole one from him had failed. Perhaps it was their honesty, or the way Leon had spoken, or his offer to help carry a burden he did not know the weight of. Or perhaps it was the night, with its bright stars and clear sky, and the clarity Leon believed they granted. 

“For a noble, you’re not so bad,” Gwaine said.

Leon blinked, opened his mouth, then closed it again in silence. As Percival had promised, the knight prepared to listen.

Gwaine sank back into the ground, his muscles loosening inside him. With a sigh he sifted through his thoughts, looking for the best words to explain his strange mood. It took a while and the right words eluded him as they always had. Not one to be put out by this, he simply said: “There are times where I, like anyone, appreciate quiet more than sound.”

Leon did not snort, but his face looked vaguely surprised in the dim firelight. Gwaine gave his own snort and turned his gaze back towards the sky.

“I’ve been a vagabond most my life,” he said with a wry smile, “And while there were spots of noise in taverns and in brawls, the road was but a lonely one. If I could not bear silence or suffer quiet in its great…entirety, then I would have made myself an honest man of work in the field of some farmer or the mine of some Lord.”

“And would you have been content working for a Lord?” Leon asked, “I have seen the looks you cast at those in Camelot, even at knights beyond the easy friendship of this close group. One might wager that you could not stand such an arrangement for long and would soon be off again with a parting insult for the Lord.” He grinned. “It would be an easy wager to take for it would be certain to prove a winning one.”

“I work for a Lord easily enough now,” Gwaine returned, “Though some might call him King one day and a servant calls him a great many inglorious things.”

Leon pondered this. Then he turned his attention back to the other knight, expression once against earnest and concerned. “You are sure there is nothing that is weighing on your mind?”

Gwaine’s fingers brushed heavy chainmail. Then he gave a blinding smile and a shake of the head. “My mind is an easy one to fathom. I may talk circles around you witless lot most days of the week, but even I grow weary of speaking from time to time.”

Leon huffed out a laugh, one more of relief than anything. “Whatever shall we do without your charming comments on this journey?”

“Perhaps you should all take lessons in conversation, then you would not be so reliant on me for it,” Gwaine retorted easily. “In the meantime, there is always Merlin and his burred tongue.”

Leon did laugh then, though he quickly muffled himself lest he should wake the others.

“This will pass,” Gwaine said in earnest, finding a need to reassure the other knight further. He grinned. “Soon enough you’ll be wishing I was silent once again.”

“Never.” Leon’s tone was light, but his eyes gleamed with something Gwaine could not describe.

The two men fell into silence, listening to the wind and the fire’s crackling. Leon shifted where he sat, something else clearly on his mind. It did not take him long to give it voice.

“Do you think you could come to regret your decision to follow Arthur as his knight?”

Gwaine thought for a moment, though the answer was already in his mouth, ready to spring forth. Arthur’s deeds flashed before him, the Prince who had pleaded to his father on a stranger’s behalf, but so too did the image of a long and weary road. The answer was ready and Gwaine, not one for restraint where none was needed, let it loose.

“No.”

There was a long pause, then, “Why?”

Gwaine closed his eyes and smiled a sombre thing. “Perhaps I’ve grown tired of the quite at long last.” 

The conversation died then and Gwaine soon drifted into a half-realm of sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This was more a character study than anything, so not too much of a storyline and it probably rambles a bit. I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. 
> 
> This is also my first time writing in this fandom, so I hope I did the characters justice.


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